12/21/2023 0 Comments Putneys waxworksWhen the Library opened the Phoebe Conrad Gallery in 2004, Phoebe was able to attend and see first-hand some of that joy for herself, on the faces of Western Pocono Community kids. Today the librarians are keeping a careful eye on these one-of-a-kind works, promoting Phoebe (who passed away in 2007 at the age of 93), and even selling a small book about her art to help maintain the joyful collection. They were put in storage until 2000 when smarter heads prevailed and they made their way to the Western Pocono Community Library. But as times and tourist tastes changed, the scenes fell out of favor. In the 1960’s the collection moved from the gallery to the Pocono resort of Memorytown USA, where they remained for almost 20 years. Now known as Phoebe’s Little Wax Works (adult admission fifty cents, kids a quarter), they were a hit. Pocono, where tourists from nearby resorts could come and see the evocative little scenes. ![]() By the 1950s she moved them to a small gallery of her own in Mountainhome, near Mt. It was the late 1940s, a time of folksy roadside attractions when she first displayed the boxes in her aunt’s barn. With the number of boxes growing, Phoebe needed a place to put them all. Soon she had a Winnie the Pooh, Hansel and Gretel, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Old Mother Hubbard, even a meticulous Charlotte’s Web (“Some Pig!”). She had studied as an artist in both Pittsburgh and at the famed Art Students League in New York, but her interest in dolls – and a chance encounter with a wax hand during her nursing training – led her to the painstaking labor of creating wax-based figures to populate storybook scenes. Homemade candles and wax products by Jim's Hill Waxworks. But it was her whimsical dioramas of storybook scenes that led her to start her own miniature wax museum in the Poconos. Handmade Soaps and Hand-poured Soy Candles are made by Jim's Hill WaxWorks in Wetumpka Alabama. ![]() What became of the museum after their demise remains unknown, but with the sole inheritor being a blind young woman, the museum's already dire situation would seem to have taken a turn for the worse.The Western Pocono Community Library has all the features of a great local library: a well-curated collection, a vibrant children’s section, dedicated staff, access to the on-line world – and one thing no other library, or anyone else has: the exquisite shadow boxes of Phoebe Conrad.īorn in 1914 in western Pennsylvania, by the young age of 34 Phoebe already had career stops as a commercial illustrator, defense factory worker, nurse, family caregiver and contributor to department store displays. The Putney's had vastly underestimated his strength, and when the two elder Putneys came to negotiate his future cooperation, he broke free and killed them both. Clare did not stay there for long however. To that end, Lavinia helped bait the trap and trick the man into a cell built into a new area of the business. Clare help him construct dioramas for the museum, but secretly he put in motion a plan to exploit the man by imprisoning him and use his face for a living tableau of freaks. Putney was immediately taken by the man's scarred face and hired him shortly after. ![]() His luck changed when a man going by the name of John Clare walked into the museum looking for work. Jack the Ripper was old news, and the Mariner's Inn massacre, in which the occupants of the inn were all brutally slain one night, was still fresh in the minds of the public. Situated in London in the late 1800s, the business fell on hard times with stiff competition from Madame Tussaud's, and so Oscar looked towards increasingly more sensational scenes to spice up his dioramas. Their daughter, who is sight blind, has developed quite a talent as a sculptress, and helps the family business shaping the features of the wax statues before they are presented for public exhibition. ![]() Oscar handles the much of the front of the business, while his wife deals with its financial administration needs. Putney Family Waxworks is the waxwork museum owned and operated by Oscar Putney, with his wife Octavia and daughter Lavinia, in Season 2 of Penny Dreadful. A wax museum or waxworks usually consists of a collection of wax sculptures representing famous people from history and contemporary personalities exhibited.
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